To succeed in the modern, competitive business environment, companies are working to maximize efficiency and decrease resource expenditure. Companies have adopted and implemented various technologies to increase operational efficiency. The use of technology can often make the difference between success and failure in the ultra-competitive business environment. From mobile telephones to fully integrated mobile personal digital assistants (PDAs) the business world is keen to adopt and incorporate new technologies to better serve their clients and to realize a competitive edge over market competitors. Most often clients/partners provide the incentive to the corporate world to evaluate, adopt, and implement technologies. As clients/partners become more technologically aware, so too must the companies servicing them. Hallmark evidence of the impact of technology on the corporate world is simply found by looking at the numerous electronic mail computing applications that exist today. It is difficult to think of a time when the corporate world did not rely on e-mail as a primary mode of communication.
The infrastructure that allows for the communication of electronic mail, also serves a basis for other intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise applications that allow for information and knowledge sharing. The infrastructure described is networked computing environments. With the proliferation of computer networks, a plethora of computing applications allowing for knowledge sharing and the communication of information have been developed. From project management computing applications, to data storage document management computing applications, to business process management and communication computing applications, computer networks have allowed companies today to perform processes more efficiently and optimally. A recent addition to this list of helpful tools is the business process server computing application. The business process server computing application enabled the electronic development and management of business processed within and between organizations. With the business process server computing application, information technology organizations can easily build distributed business processes that integrate applications and partners, as well as quickly establish reliable, secure trading relationships with customers and key partners using public computer networks (such as the Internet).
Currently, companies employ business process server computing applications for knowledge sharing and information communication between themselves and various partners. In this context, the business process computing application serves as a relationship management and fostering tool. As a management tool, current implementations of business process server computing applications tend to be passive in nature, often requiring expert manual oversight for updates to any configurations between the cooperating parties. The benefits realized by current implementations of business process server computing applications are astounding. Companies can share various data with their partners/client that assist with various business processes including but not limited to: transaction fulfillment, inventory management, customer relationship management, billing, and accounting.
However, there are many shortcomings with existing business process server computing applications. May of the problems arise with trading partners and are caused by a lack of both user experience and technical expertise when handling electronic data exchanges. A number of challenges are often encountered including: each cooperating party requiring significant amounts of support when testing the business process server computing application across the various cooperating parties, the deployment of new and existing technologies taking longer than anticipated, project status often not visible to the account representative during the testing process, and the support of non-cooperating parties. As more parties cooperate with a particular implementation of a business process server computing application, configuration management and configuration information deployment become tantamount to the success of the application and its general efficacy.
From the foregoing, it is appreciated that there exists a need for a system and methods that ameliorate the shortcomings of existing practices.